Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 3.djvu/23

 9 th S. III. JAN. 7, '99.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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logical history it is comparatively valueles The 'National Cyclopaedia,' s.v. 'Horology says, "In 1560 Tycho Brahe had fou clocks which indicated hours, minutes, anc seconds." Seconds, however, did not ver soon become a recognized measure of tim because, although Shakspeare uses the wore "minute" freely, he never once employ "second" in this sense. Queen Elizabeth watch, preserved in the library of the Roya Institution, London, would be worth lookin at as regards its dialling. And a consultatio of Prof. J. D. Everett's ' Units and Physica Constants,' London, 1879, would probabl reveal the date when the second supplantec the minute as the unit in the measuremen of time. ARTHUR MAYALL.

EXECUTION OF ANNE BOLEYN (9 th S. ii. 468) I am inclined to think that prior to 148 the sword, and not the axe, was usually em ployed as the weapon for judicial decapitation arid that a block was dispensed with, th victims receiving their doom " meekly kneel ing upon their knees," and in this opinion ! am fortified by the concurrence of an eminen clerical historian, now a distinguished prelate with whom I was many years since engagec in a most agreeable correspondence upon this very subject. This learned writer agreec with me that the axe did not become the "regulation" lethal implement until after the rough-and-ready "heading" of Lore Hastings on the Tower Green, when he was summarily dispatched by order of the Pro- tector Gloucester. In this instance, accord- ing to the chroniclers, the victim's neck was stretched upon a piece of timber then in use for the repair of the adjacent church of St. Peter ad Vincula, probably a " putlog," part of the scaffolding which we read "con- veniently lay in the way." Contemporary accounts seem to indicate that the executioner straddled over the prone body, and from this position I infer that the decapitation was effected by the tool known as an adze, the cut- ting edge of which is at a right angle to, and not in a plane with, the haft. I may add that the only contemporary reference I have come across of the use, or proposed use, of an axe and block for inflicting capital punishment prior to this tragedy is in one of the Paston series of letters, describing the peril of an unfortunate captive of Jack Cade's rebels (A.D. 1450), a generation before Lord Hastings was jso clumsily hacked to death. MR. PICK- FORD'S query may be partially answered by a reference to the case of Richard Scrope, Arch- bishop of York, executed in Clementhorpe I icld, outside the walls of York, on the feast

day of St. William, the patron saint of that city, Whit Monday, 8 June, 1405, after the abortive rebellion suppressed by the treacher- ous equivocation of Prince John of Lancaster against his father Henry IV. (see Shake- speare, * Henry IV.,' part ii.). That erudite historian Mr. J. H. Wylie, in his * History of Henry IV.,' vol. ii. pp. 240-4, does not refer to the tradition that the prelate died from sword strokes, and, indeed, by his mention of a block appears to imply that an axe was used, and it may be conceded that the martial weapon would scarcely be the one to be wielded by the executioner, who was a convict fetched from York Castle, where he was undergoing a term of imprisonment; but there is preserved in the Bodleian Library a Book of Hours of the middle of the fifteenth century, supposed to have belonged to Queen Margaret of Scotland, ornamented in a style of somewhat earlier date, including a Latin hymn and a collect in honour of this arch- prelate, who was generally regarded as a martyr, and the volume contains a full- page miniature representation (apparently by a contemporary eye - witness) of the execution, where a sword is the weapon employed. The archbishop is said (and this tradition Mr. Wylie accepts) to have entreated the executioner to deal him five strokes, corresponding with the five wounds of Christ, and Hall, the chronicler, records a contemporary superstition that at the moment the head fell five several wounds broke out on the neck of the king,
 * hen sitting at table dining in York (the

execution took place at midday, in the first lour of the afternoon, 1 P.M.), and that these esions were the precursors of the leprosy which afterwards developed on the royal )pdy, and from which Henry suffered until lis death (the immediate cause of which was apoplexy) eight years later. Miracles were >elieved to have been wrought over the tomb n the minster where the holy man's remains were laid to rest for many years after the onsummation of the tragedy. NEMO.

Temple.

M.P.P. (9 th S. ii. 528). As " M.P." in Canada means member of the Dominion Parliament, M.P.P." probably stanels for member of Pro- incial Parliament. British Columbia is, of ourse, a province of the Dominion.

A. M. P.

HENRIETTA MARIA PRICE (9 th S. ii. 448). Some particulars of this lady will be found n the 'Diary of Samuel Pepys, F.E.S.,'

nder dates of 8 Feb., 1662, and 10 June, 1666;

iso in the ' Memoirs of the Court of Eng-